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Geocaching is Getting too Segregated


lilbeardy

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

Edited by lilbeardy
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I enjoyed geocaching for months with a basic (free) membership before I paid for a premium membership. The basic services on the geocaching.com site are still free, just as they always have been.

 

I pay for a premium membership because the additional premium services are worth at least $30/year to me. If they aren't worth at least $30/year to you, then go ahead and continue geocaching with a basic membership. There are plenty of experienced geocachers who have basic memberships, so you'll be in good company.

 

I hope "all this money" allows Groundspeak to cover their expenses and to earn a healthy profit, so they can continue to provide basic services to all geocachers, and premium services to those of us who choose to pay for premium membership.

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

 

Stupid? No-body is making you pay. Lots of people play without a PM. And if we got the for free, they wouldn't br premium features now, would they.

 

How would you suggest they pay their staff? Pay for the building? Pay for the servers, and web hosting, and even for the forum software?

 

And $30 is cheap. I can spend $50 in a couple hours playing paintball. I can spend $30 on one gallon of fuel for my RC monster truck, or I could go a electric and spend $50-$200 on batteries. My local RC track had a membership of like $200 a year. You can't even fill up your car for $30. My phone bill is more than that per month. Then you can consider smokers. I know it's cheaper in the US, but in Canada as pack a day is $3000 a year. Play hockey? Alcoholic? $20-$30 for a bottle of vodka....a couple nights a week. \even if you buy a $300 GPS every year it's still as lot cheaper than other hobbies. That $30 for a whole year isn't so expensive now is it? And then, you don't even have to spend that-lots of people cache without a PM.

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

 

Stupid? No-body is making you pay. Lots of people play without a PM. And if we got the for free, they wouldn't br premium features now, would they.

 

How would you suggest they pay their staff? Pay for the building? Pay for the servers, and web hosting, and even for the forum software?

 

And $30 is cheap. I can spend $50 in a couple hours playing paintball. I can spend $30 on one gallon of fuel for my RC monster truck, or I could go a electric and spend $50-$200 on batteries. My local RC track had a membership of like $200 a year. You can't even fill up your car for $30. My phone bill is more than that per month. Then you can consider smokers. I know it's cheaper in the US, but in Canada as pack a day is $3000 a year. Play hockey? Alcoholic? $20-$30 for a bottle of vodka....a couple nights a week. \even if you buy a $300 GPS every year it's still as lot cheaper than other hobbies. That $30 for a whole year isn't so expensive now is it? And then, you don't even have to spend that-lots of people cache without a PM.

 

How about downhill snow skiing or snow boarding? I own a couple of pairs of downhill snow skis, therefore ski resorts should not charge me to use their ski lifts. In reality, $30 would't be enough for a single day of skiing at most resorts.

 

I own a TV therefore I should not have to pay for cable or a dish service.

 

 

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Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money.

Running a website that gets hundreds of millions of hits a year, paying for the necessary equipment and to manage a huge database, and rent for office space, as well as paying the salaries of a team of developers and support staff. Oh, and probably feeding their families and paying their mortgages.

 

Getting too segregated? The premium model has been around nearly since I started geocaching. Nothing has changed for 99.9 percent of geocachers in that respect, so I don't see how we're getting anything different than what most of us signed up for.

 

We have a choice. Nobody is required to pay a penny to this website to geocache. Feel free to continue to enjoy this sport for free the way thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people do. And if you think the premium features might be worth it then feel equally free to shell out the whopping 9 cents a day.

Edited by briansnat
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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

 

I don't care what Groundspeak does with the money, all I care about is the simple question "is this service worth $30?" - if I answer yes then I buy it, if not I don't buy it.

 

What is a shame is that there seem to be endless workarounds for perceived shortcomings in the existing infrastructure, and while a load of third party software and sites appear to provide the services people want Groundspeak seems to be using resources on things a lot of people seem to not want or that add nothing to the game of geocaching.

 

For example, the request to provide a facility to mark a trackable as missing in the field was requested over two years ago. This would provide a useful feature that would make the game better. The latest faceache integration does little other than provide the smartphone zombies the chance to "like" a cache within a second of finding it, but doesn't seem to offer any new functionality to the game of caching.

Edited by team tisri
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I think your 'segregation' comment may be a bit of an over-statement. I mean, the Premium Member Only restrooms at the Mega events are nice, as are the Premium Member Only restaurants and not having to ride at the back of the bus. :ph34r:

 

There is no segregation here. Everyone can find and log PMO caches.

If you want some of the perks, like Pocket Queries, Bookmark Lists and being able to give Favorite points, pony up the whopping sum of 8 cents per day.

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I think after I buy a cell phone I shouldn't have to pay $30+ every month for the service. seriously $30+ every month; what is the carrier doing with all that money?

 

FTFYbiggrin.gif

 

Seriously though, when I first was interested in a premium membership I was shocked that it was only $30 a year.

Many of the Groundspeak volunteer Reviewers are dogs. The money goes toward subsidizing their doggy treats.

I thought they were mostly hamsters!laugh.gif

Edited by ADKer
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I thought they were mostly hamsters!laugh.gif

 

No, many dogs are reviewers, and there are also dogs who cache. The hamsters power the servers-the hamster wheels power the servers. Then there's wanna be animal-employees like chipmunks, but they don't do as good a job, so they don't work here, but they did find some work at a lesser site... :laughing::ph34r:

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

See how you like this website: http://project-gc.com/Profile/ProfileStats?profile_name=lilbeardy&getprofile=Get+profile

 

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

 

Geocaching.com was feemium before freemium was all the rage.

 

Personally I think Geocaching should be in the hands of a non profit member owned organization like some other well known and respected organizations. But I also like pretending to be a real cacher too. So I pay. Before I paid. I just dealt with it. There are plenty of tools for regular members to make it easy.

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money.

In capitalism, you give people the money to reward them for doing things that are cool. Giving people money because they need it to accomplish something you want them to do is how communism works. Was that distinction not made clear when you were in school?

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Looking at your find count spanning 4 years, premium membership would cost you $1 per cache. That's pretty steep, so I understand your disconnect with the fee. I don't think Geocaching is as big of a piece of your recreation time as it is for many of us. Premium membership probably doesn't make sense for you right now, certainly not for stats. If you ever start to cache more often, the other features are a great help.

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And $30 is cheap. I can spend $50 in a couple hours playing paintball. I can spend $30 on one gallon of fuel for my RC monster truck, or I could go a electric and spend $50-$200 on batteries. My local RC track had a membership of like $200 a year. You can't even fill up your car for $30. My phone bill is more than that per month. Then you can consider smokers. I know it's cheaper in the US, but in Canada as pack a day is $3000 a year. Play hockey? Alcoholic? $20-$30 for a bottle of vodka....

 

Or 2 glass of wine at dinner.

 

Or my Starbucks budget for one WEEK.

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Really, we're going to rehash this old argument again? Didn't this just come up last week?

Two weeks ago it was warfare, this is segregation.

Next week is existentialism and the cosmic reality of things.

 

Existentialism? Is the like "Are we really caching, or are we the dream of a giant grasshopper laying on an ammo can?" Or is existentialism the I think therefore I am. I am a me to question my existence, so I do exist in some form...

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Is it Tuesday again already?

 

I used to pay $50/month for cable t.v. which I never watched. It always amazes me that there are people in life that think everything should be free (as long as someone else, not them, has to provide it). I bet Jeremy wishes the electricity company would stop sending those pesky bills and his children stop needing new shoes.

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

Do the math, thirty dollars a year figures out to 8.2 cents a day. How many frivolous things do you spend your money on that costs you ten times that amount?

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

Do the math, thirty dollars a year figures out to 8.2 cents a day. How many frivolous things do you spend your money on that costs you ten times that amount?

Our family shares a PM account with two basic accounts for the kids. :D

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And $30 is cheap. I can spend $50 in a couple hours playing paintball. I can spend $30 on one gallon of fuel for my RC monster truck, or I could go a electric and spend $50-$200 on batteries. My local RC track had a membership of like $200 a year. You can't even fill up your car for $30. My phone bill is more than that per month. Then you can consider smokers. I know it's cheaper in the US, but in Canada as pack a day is $3000 a year. Play hockey? Alcoholic? $20-$30 for a bottle of vodka....

 

Or 2 glass of wine at dinner.

 

Or my Starbucks budget for one WEEK.

 

You pay $30/week to Charbucks? Wow...

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In capitalism, you give people the money to reward them for doing things that are cool. Giving people money because they need it to accomplish something you want them to do is how communism works. Was that distinction not made clear when you were in school?

 

But somehow this is a strong argument for not paying the PM-fee for someone like myself who does not think that what Groundspeak does is cool. I want that the website exists as there is no reasonable alternative where a reasonable number of caches are offered. The caches are however hidden by cachers and not by a website provider.

From the point of view of strategical decisions that have a big influence on how geocaching develops I could not be more dissatisfied than I'm with Groundspeak.

 

I do think however that for those that want to use PQs, bookmark lists etc the 30$ are worth the PM-fee. However, paying the PM-fee is not only a contribution to the costs, but the more customers they have, the more Groundspeak will think that the customers are happy with how geocaching develops and support decisions like allowing powertrails that ruin geocaching for many.

 

30$ is not much for most cachers, but the danger associated with fees is that geocaching should not be handled as a business where it is not an issue if say 100 old customers geht lost if 1000 new are found instead.

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And $30 is cheap. I can spend $50 in a couple hours playing paintball. I can spend $30 on one gallon of fuel for my RC monster truck, or I could go a electric and spend $50-$200 on batteries. My local RC track had a membership of like $200 a year. You can't even fill up your car for $30. My phone bill is more than that per month. Then you can consider smokers. I know it's cheaper in the US, but in Canada as pack a day is $3000 a year. Play hockey? Alcoholic? $20-$30 for a bottle of vodka....

 

Or 2 glass of wine at dinner.

 

Or my Starbucks budget for one WEEK.

 

You pay $30/week to Charbucks? Wow...

 

$5 per quad tall dry cappuccino, ~5+ times a week. Doesn't include my afternoon break (my hospital has 2 Starbucks in it!)

 

Also, my hometown Starbucks sells beer, wine, and appetizers. I don't include that in the weekly budget :lol:

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

 

If you want it, then buy it!

 

Person like myself, I do not have any need to purchase "The Prime Membership" fee at this time because I wouldn't use the upgraded features anyways available on my phone , so it does me no good.

 

Far as finding "Premium Caches", there's only one around here that I barely want to see Your Ticket to Paradise 2 (GC2R4RX). I work with the guy... if I asked him I'm sure he'd give me the cords to go search the thing out if I wanted. I don't cache away from home anyways, my vacations and trips are filled with drinking the Local Beers (Example) and chowing down on fresh seafood. (Yoda) Away from home Cacher... I am not.

 

I can't hand out favorite points, I kinda wish that system would change... but it doesn't bother me all that much. Wish there was something in place where I could get one point to give away with every trackable I bought directly from them....

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DUNKIN DONUTS FTW! The Non-pretentious coffee!

 

If someone is feeling segregated, perhaps it isn't the cost of membership that is the problem. Of course, I don't mind being segregated. Solo caching is very enjoyable in my opinion. Only YOU can truly find the cache, and no one is piggy-backing. I wouldn't mind finding a hiking buddy for safety on some of the more adventurous caches.

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DUNKIN DONUTS FTW! The Non-pretentious coffee!

 

If someone is feeling segregated, perhaps it isn't the cost of membership that is the problem. Of course, I don't mind being segregated. Solo caching is very enjoyable in my opinion. Only YOU can truly find the cache, and no one is piggy-backing. I wouldn't mind finding a hiking buddy for safety on some of the more adventurous caches.

 

You spelled "Tim Horton's" wrong....

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DUNKIN DONUTS FTW! The Non-pretentious coffee!

 

If someone is feeling segregated, perhaps it isn't the cost of membership that is the problem. Of course, I don't mind being segregated. Solo caching is very enjoyable in my opinion. Only YOU can truly find the cache, and no one is piggy-backing. I wouldn't mind finding a hiking buddy for safety on some of the more adventurous caches.

 

You spelled "Tim Horton's" wrong....

 

+1, eh? :D

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DUNKIN DONUTS FTW! The Non-pretentious coffee!

 

If someone is feeling segregated, perhaps it isn't the cost of membership that is the problem. Of course, I don't mind being segregated. Solo caching is very enjoyable in my opinion. Only YOU can truly find the cache, and no one is piggy-backing. I wouldn't mind finding a hiking buddy for safety on some of the more adventurous caches.

 

You spelled "Tim Horton's" wrong....

I support American businesses.
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$30 a year is CHEAP!!!!!! That's not even 9 CENTS A DAY!!!

 

This is the CHEAPEST hobby (and I'm not counting gas) that I've ever been involved with and I absolutely love it.

 

Pay the $30 ...and you'll be amazed at all the things you can do with that membership. If not....then, you'll just have to get used to the limitations.

 

It's only fair that ...those of us who ARE paying $30 - can enjoy it without limitations.

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Everything I see that i think is cool such as http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/. I need a premium membership for, and that's soooo annoying. Seriously $30 a year, what is Groundspeak doing with all this money. It's not that i'm cheap but i think this turns away a bunch of cachers, and is somewhat stupid.I think geocaching.com should not charge anything for preimum features

 

Geocaching.com was feemium before freemium was all the rage.

 

Personally I think Geocaching should be in the hands of a non profit member owned organization like some other well known and respected organizations. But I also like pretending to be a real cacher too. So I pay. Before I paid. I just dealt with it. There are plenty of tools for regular members to make it easy.

 

Pretty much. According to wikipedia, which we know to never be wrong, the term Freemium wasn't coined until 2006. :blink:

 

replying to all of your comments

 

where can you get more stuff like this:

http://project-gc.com/Profile/ProfileStats?profile_name=lilbeardy&getprofile=Get+profile

 

for basic members

 

I was also unaware that it was soo expensive to run this system, guess i'm just your run of the mill cheapskate

 

There was a "whose caches have you found the most of" thread in my local forum, and I remember pointing a couple non-premium members to project-gc for that info. It's true that website uses the Geocaching.com API, whereas just about any other stats program that has ever come out uses a MyFinds PQ, but I am moderately surprised TPTB allow it.

 

To answer your question, besides project-gc, there are a couple of European GSAK clones that also work for non-premium members. But I'm going to guess you're not that advanced in messing around your caching data. :P

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In capitalism, you give people the money to reward them for doing things that are cool. Giving people money because they need it to accomplish something you want them to do is how communism works. Was that distinction not made clear when you were in school?

 

But somehow this is a strong argument for not paying the PM-fee for someone like myself who does not think that what Groundspeak does is cool. I want that the website exists as there is no reasonable alternative where a reasonable number of caches are offered. The caches are however hidden by cachers and not by a website provider.

From the point of view of strategical decisions that have a big influence on how geocaching develops I could not be more dissatisfied than I'm with Groundspeak.

 

I do think however that for those that want to use PQs, bookmark lists etc the 30$ are worth the PM-fee. However, paying the PM-fee is not only a contribution to the costs, but the more customers they have, the more Groundspeak will think that the customers are happy with how geocaching develops and support decisions like allowing powertrails that ruin geocaching for many.

 

30$ is not much for most cachers, but the danger associated with fees is that geocaching should not be handled as a business where it is not an issue if say 100 old customers geht lost if 1000 new are found instead.

 

And the great thing is that those who are willing to pay the $30, buy stuff from the store, pay for tracking numbers, etc. are able to help this corporation keep its servers operating so people like you can post your continuous displeasure openly in these forums. Isn't Capitalism and Free Speech wonderful?

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briansnat..."Feel free to continue to enjoy this sport for free the way thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people do. And if you think the premium features might be worth it then feel equally free to shell out the whopping 9 cents a day."... B) well said...

 

'K13'...If you want some of the perks, like Pocket Queries, Bookmark Lists and being able to give Favorite points, pony up the whopping sum of 8 cents per day... B) i agree, good counter...

 

y'all who know me know i can't add, much less divide, but however much is is per day >>>> Shhhhhhhh...

Groundspeak might hear and decide to up it to a dime next year... :yikes:

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And the great thing is that those who are willing to pay the $30, buy stuff from the store, pay for tracking numbers, etc. are able to help this corporation keep its servers operating so people like you can post your continuous displeasure openly in these forums. Isn't Capitalism and Free Speech wonderful?

 

Yes, they are but this still does not mean that I think that geocaching should be governed by business rules.

 

If I were satisfied with Groundspeak's strategy, I would be willing to pay much more than 30 Euro even though I have no need for the extras like PQs etc which I would not use anyway. The backside of course would be that if they made people like me happy, they would earn overall much less as that would mean to attract much less people. It is no secret and I never denied it that I'm belonging to a minority group. So I have to live with the fact that what makes the majority happy, makes me unhappy.

Groundspeak is certainly doing good work to approach a large audience and trying to please as many of them which is not an easy thing to do. Personally, I would prefer something different and take the right do say so.

 

 

Cezanne

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I'm glad someone is looking out for me. I didn't know I was being segregated because I'm not given a free premium membership.

 

Now that I think of it, I'm being segregated by an acquaintance because she didn't invite me to her wedding. Then there's the country club that makes me pay a fee to play golf or use their pool since I haven't paid a membership fee. Heck, way back when I registered my first vehicle in New York state they segregated me. I had to pay more money to register my car than my friends did because my car was heavier than theirs. Good thing there's people out there to raise my consciousness and let me know how I'm being mistreated. Shoot, it just occurred to me I can't even get food stamps just because my wife's income and my retirement puts me above their arbitrary income levels. More segregation!

 

Come on, get off your high horse. This is a game. There's rules to it and if you don't like the rules just go to the house and find another game.

 

Quit cheapening what has been real problems of segregation by calling this segregation.

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Looking at your find count spanning 4 years, premium membership would cost you $1 per cache. That's pretty steep, so I understand your disconnect with the fee. I don't think Geocaching is as big of a piece of your recreation time as it is for many of us. Premium membership probably doesn't make sense for you right now, certainly not for stats. If you ever start to cache more often, the other features are a great help.

 

The main problem that if face is that i'm a poor student. Parent's aren't cachers. And i'm still in JR. HIGH.

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